Have you seen the pit of despair?

Search the internet for “pit of despair” and you’ll find an old grotesque machine used to torture people or animals.  Many of you probably remember seeing one in the movie The Princess Bride.  Poor young Wesley was just trying to follow the orders of his “True Love” but winds up half dead.  Yet he still finds a way to rescue his girl.

Search the Bible for “pit of despair” and you’ll find something more relatable.  Read Psalm 40.  Verse 2 hits me right in the gut.  It says:

He [God] lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire.  He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along.

Whether you feel you’ve been rescued by God or not, you can certainly empathize with the author’s description of despair.  He’s trying to walk through life but the ground underneath him is impossible to stand on without help.  The dictionary defines mud and mire as wet, swampy ground… to be entangled… stuck.  Yeah, I’ve been there.

As a young pastor’s wife with a great teaching job, I felt very lonely on Sundays.  During the week I was fine.  But at church I didn’t feel like I could connect to anyone.  After being married for almost 5 years, I desparately searched for an answer.   My hubby and I were done moving around (or so I thought).  I had a nice job, so did he.  But somehow things weren’t quite meshing together.  As I observed all the happy ladies at church, they had one thing in common: babies.  I felt like I found it - the missing link.

We began the process of “trying” and it just didn’t work.  Every weekend at church, sitting lonely and distraught by myself, I was reminded of how UN-blessed I was.  Time passed, I became more cynical and unhappy.  Our situation changed… new church… new home.  Surely now God would provide?  And boy, did he ever.  He provided in a way that I will never forget.  And it wasn’t pretty.

More on my story tomorrow.

Do you know that:

• 1 out of 4 women experience some form of depression in their lifetime.
• Women are 2x as more likely to get depression than men.
• Depression doesn’t have prejudices… it generally affects equally across race and ethnic lines.
• 80% of treated patients show improvement within 4-6 weeks.
• Only 1 out of 5 women seek treatment.

(Statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health.)

Your turn.  Have you seen the pit of despair?  If you want to reply, but remain anonymous, that is fine.  Sometimes purging your thoughts can be healing.  Read this if you need instructions on how to reply.